Obama cranks up populist pitch (The Hill)

President Obama used his election-year State of the Union address to issue a loud call for economic equality based on “responsibility from everybody,” a theme prefacing his 2012 campaign message.

Cranking up the volume on the populist message that the wealthy should pay higher taxes, Obama said the goal of economic equality was a return to American values and “the defining issue of our time.”

In the address — dubbed a “Blueprint for an America Built to Last” — Obama used the power of the bully pulpit before a sharply divided joint session of Congress to take the offensive and pledge that while he would work with lawmakers, he also intended to “fight obstruction with action.”

The president said “no challenge is more urgent” than to support the middle class.

“We can either settle for a country where a shrinking number of people do really well, while a growing number of Americans barely get by or we can restore an economy where everyone gets a fair shot, everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same set of rules,” Obama said. “What’s at stake are not Democratic values or Republican values but American values. We have to reclaim them.”

27. Yep. What you said.

9. Everybody mouths the same empty key words

I was struck listening to the Repuke response by how similar their speech sounded to the president's. The Repukes claim to want to address income inequality and joblessness and to work together to promote fairness and a level playing field, yada, yada, yada. But is anyone on either side going to do anything about it? Of course not. They've demonstrated a thousand times over that their visions for how to accomplish those things are so divergent that there is no way for them to work together. Repukes will continue to shoot down any proposal a Dem introduces and vice versa. And, given how extreme Repuke ideology is these days, inactivity beats the alternative of helping Repukes further the country's drift towards a fascist plutocracy. But in the absence of any substantive common ground, all both sides have left is just empty slogans: freedom, liberty, justice, blah, blah, blah, wave the flag, wave the flag. Wake me up when somebody actually does something.

22. "Too little, too late I'm afraid."

....yep....but I think I understood his logic....as soon as you take a position, you make someone happy and then piss-off someone else....his desire was to please everyone, his risk is to please no one....

13. Time to pay up rich folks.

16. Thank You www.whitehouse.gov & DU

I don't have a TV, almost 61
clicked on DU, clicked on "enhanced live stream"
Have now moved my "Get Involved Obama..." replaced with www.whitehouse.com for my places visited everyday...
You know busy...
How cool was that? At white house dot, scrolled over chairs of whom sat with Michelle & other interesting articles.
The graphs with the State of the Union, are OUTSTANDING!
Better than a rock star Thank You